Friday, August 05, 2016

"There is something deeply morally wrong about a small minority in
our society making huge profits from non-productive speculation, setting
the economy up for a crash, whilst hard working people struggle to keep
up with rack renting, never mind never being able to afford their own
home," he says. "Unions have had enough of this, and we are going to build a movement to solve this problem like we did in the 1930s."- Joe Carolan, Unite Union.

Wednesday, August 03, 2016

Recently around
the country, mostly in Auckland, a peaceful protest movement called
Park Up For Homes is growing and spreading. Organised by community
members in conjunction with Child Poverty Action Group, the protest
is about the complete inaction by the government to provide warm,
dry, safe and affordable homes for the most venerable in our society.
As a result of their inaction more people are homeless and sleeping
in cars and many more people having 15+ people living in one
3-bedroom house as private rentals are becoming unaffordable for
many. So the general public are coming out in support by sleeping in
their cars overnight to show their solidarity for the people who this
is a constant sad reality for. Hundreds have turned up at each
protest.

So far we have
seen protest action in Otara, Mangere, Onehunga, Henderson, outside
of parliament and protests also being planned for Hamilton and
Napier. A few politicians have come out to give a speech and show
support. The most frequent being Marama Davison from the Green
Party. Park up Onehunga even had world renown boxing great David Tua
showing his support.

What has caused
this? Wages over the last 30 years have not kept up with the cost of
living and inflation, we have a housing market which is a “free for
all” for investors buying up houses and leaving them sitting empty
due to excessive capital gains being made in short periods of time.
We have over 33,000 empty homes in Auckland alone. We have a housing
shortage in Auckland of approx. 40,000 homes.

An uncontrolled
thirst for property ownership caused by successive capitalist
governments only serving the interests of the rich with their
neo-liberal policies for the last 30 years are fuelling this crisis.
The current government is so pre-occupied in selling of state housing
to private developers in the middle of this shortage to serve the own
selfish and inhuman ideology.

The National
party has proposed giving out $1b in loans to councils for
infrastructure which is really only going to be going to rich private
developers. Labour has reached out further announcing it would build
100,000 homes, 50,000 in Auckland and at least 10,000 homes each year
nationwide. Whilst this is definitely an improvement, it does not go
far enough to stop housing from being an investment option. With
Labour saying that an affordable house is going to be approximately
$600,000. Even someone on $70,000 annual salary wouldn’t be able
to service a $500,000 home loan, neverlone a $600,000 one. And what
would you even get for $600,000 in Auckland anyway? And to top this
off, neither party has mentioned anything about rental control.

Average rental prices are over $500 per week in Auckland. To move in
you’re going to need at least $2,500 in bond and advance rent.
How’s someone on minimum wage of $15.25 going to afford the rent,
never lone the bond to get it? “Too bad!” according to our two
main political parties.

Socialists and
community activists must keep the pressure on our capitalist
government to ensure that as much attention as possible can be
brought to this monstrosity of an issue in hope that people power
will prevail and we’ll get some real action. People before profit
all the way.

Migrant workers are among the most vulnerable and exploited sections of the working class. The system and its laws conspire to put them ...

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